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Financial Planning and Accounting practice case study: How to make digital resources work?

This client (who has some 15 staff across two offices) employs PlannerWeb’s premium digital marketing service.  They have tried for many years, using newsletters in the main, to supply more to their clients and to enhance communications and client experience.  The results have been poor and they feel readership, and therefore value, has dropped to almost nothing.  They have also tried a number of other strategies such as sales training, social media and SEO but none have delivered.

They now realize marketing and client development is more complex than they thought. 

Also their experience showed them they didn’t really have the time, expertise or focus to get the job done.  The same experience also showed them that hiring one-service (SEO for example) consultants doesn’t work either.  By ‘work’ we mean serious help to attain practice development objectives.

They have around 4,000 clients which equal huge potential – only 2,000 e-mail addresses though (another project).  The newsletters they sent were not generating website traffic and without that their clients could not be sold more, their clients’ close contacts could not be accessed, they could not improve the client experience, and they could offer little extra to referral partners.  Nor could their rankings in Google be enhanced.

They then asked PlannerWeb to take over their digital marketing function because they agreed that it’s time to stop doing the same thing and expecting results to change.  They also believe that PlannerWeb’s own research into why this happens in accounting practices is correct.  That is, the relative digital marketing effectiveness of a website is 5%, interactive content is 30% and strategy implementation is 65%.  The latter is the practice’s role but few, if any, get it done and so the whole process fails which results in lost opportunities year after year.  PlannerWeb took over the role the practice plays.  A presentation on outsourcing your marketing function can be seen here.

To do the job properly PlannerWeb needs:
– control of the website (even though we may not have built it) so landing pages, specialist content and message windows can be quickly added and at no extra cost;
– to be able to work with 5-6 interactive content components on the website;
– to provide the expertise, time and focus to do the job professionally.

Only PlannerWeb supplies all three components.

Results.  In this case, and after only three months, there have been over 2,500 website page hits generated from actual clients compared to almost none before using newsletters.  Actions also include activities that focus on client interest outside accounting to help create a more human and community ‘face’.  Analysis tools are used to analyse both e-mail clicks and website traffic.   Also over 50 leads have been generated that are proactively followed-up, there’s been a 176% increase in site visits (all from clients) and there’s been more client feedback in one month than the practice received in a whole year in the past.

That’s over 2,500 chances to educate, communicate, promote a brand, build relationships, promote services, and generate turnover, plus it is a good start to making clients the practice’s best sales people.  Discussions with this client now include marketing strategy and effectiveness, setting of growth targets, identification of targets such as medical professionals, and how to integrate referral partners better – PlannerWeb has software for this as well.

Social media funnels are also being updated by the same articles.

This practice thinks PlannerWeb’s new service is value for money and is helping to attain their objectives.  If you want to do the same then ask us to call.

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